


letters

by yewgrove



Category: Mozart l'Opéra Rock - Mozart/Baguian & Guirao
Genre: Getting Together, Love Letters, M/M, da ponte did not sign up for this, this is the sappiest thing i have ever written
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-20 09:47:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13144095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yewgrove/pseuds/yewgrove
Summary: Salieri is already preoccupied with brooding about his emotions towards Mozart. He doesn't need to be receiving a frankly embarrassing quantity of anonymous love notes on a daily basis. And yet.





	letters

**Author's Note:**

> happy holidays & secret salieri exchange to didly-dont on tumblr!  
> where does this fall historically? where does it fall in terms of the musical's continuity? who knows! not me!  
> none of this is remotely checked for historical accuracy, except that I stole Mozart's '2999 1/2' kisses from one of Historical Mozart's letters to Constance. the man was a sap.

Anyone would think that a city as large as Vienna would have space enough for two composers to exist without continually running into each other. Why, in amidst all the sprawling streets and gleaming corridors, it seemed that Salieri could not go more than a few days without tripping over Wolfgang Mozart - frequently literally, given the apparent aversion the city’s resident genius had to moving in a predictable or controlled fashion - was anyone’s guess, and Salieri’s continual torment. 

The site of their latest collision was a small, quiet music room, one that Salieri had thought (hoped) would have been far enough out of the way to be private. Mozart’s jacket had slipped off of the music stand it had been flung over, and was lying on the smooth floorboards like the plumage of some obnoxiously colorful bird. Towards the tall window, its owner was slumped against the ornate lid of the piano. The quiet, chill gleam of winter sunlight glittered on the touselled ends of his hair like gold leaf on a paintbrush. 

Salieri considered waking him up, sending him home. It wouldn’t even have been an unkind act - Mozart had been even busier than usual lately, his ordinary flamboyance beginning to wear through at the edges, giving off the telltale signs of too many sleepless nights. It would do him good to go home and rest. Salieri stepped closer. Then he stopped, distracted. The unfinished piece that Mozart had been working on lay strewn on top of the keyboard next to its author.

There was a familiar tremble in Salieri’s hand as he reached to pick up the music. A familiar, dizzying, almost painful ecstasy, like his heart was a guttering candle, as the theme unwound and expanded and took shape in his mind. It was unfinished, of course, untidy in places, lacking some of the harmonies that Salieri knew it needed, but still - sublime. Like everything that this infuriating man composed.

Well, Mozart would never finish it if he caught a chill, and then Salieri would never know how the ending would sound. He stooped, picked up Mozart’s jacket, hesitated. Watched the tiny crease in between Mozart’s eyebrows, until the quietness in the room started to ring in his ears, reminding him how he would look to any passerby, standing creepily over the slumped body of his fellow composer. Then he reached out, and settled the jacket over Mozart’s shoulders. 

Mozart’s quill was lying neatly beside the stack of manuscript paper. In a moment of daring - which, Salieri was sure, he would have bragged about to Da Ponte, had this whole episode not been too overwhelmingly embarrassing to even bear the thought of repeating - he tore a spare corner off of the sheet music.

_Even genius composers need sleep - go home to bed - S_

Then he scratched out the _S_ , just in case, and wrote _A_ , and left.

That moment - quiet, vulnerable Mozart gilded by sunlight, his shoulders, for the barest second, beneath Salieri’s hands - would most likely have preoccupied Salieri’s brooding for a good while, except that the next day was the day that the first letter arrived.

*

‘Maestro Salieri!’ read the outside. The inside was simple - a few lines praising Salieri’s eyes, his hair, his bearing. It was signed with a tiny star.

Salieri read it over a few times where he stood, leaning against the doorframe of his lodgings, bewildered. The practise of sending and receiving love notes was not unheard of amongst the pleasure-seekers of Viennese society, of course, but Salieri tended to keep himself apart from such things. He read the note again, ran his finger over the neat scrawl on the front. The writing was small, with some creative flourishes, but by no means untidy or unreadable. It was definitely Salieri’s name.

After that, the letters arrived almost every day. Some were short, mere sentences. Others spanned paragraphs. There were compliments, sweet talk, suggestions of places that the writer would enjoy Salieri’s company. The style, for the most part, was frank and simple, dotted with exclamation points and exuberant swarms of kisses that sometimes verged on the ridiculous. One slightly thicker envelope contained a gift, a velvet ribbon in a deep purple colour, ‘ _for your pretty curls!_ ’ The opening salutations cycled through German, French, and (mostly readable) Italian, but the endings were always the same - _yours_ , followed by the same tiny star.

He ought to have been alarmed, or at the very least creeped out, Salieri reflected. The writer clearly knew where he lived. But the letters were - sweet. None of them went beyond romantic prose, and the thought of the notes stopping - of losing the daily suggestion of affection that they contained - left Salieri feeling uncomfortably hollow. He couldn’t tell which was sadder, the fact that these hints at romance had become the most interesting thing in his life, or the idea of being so committed to an uninteresting life that he would go out of his way to make them stop. Maybe they would stop by themselves eventually - the writer would probably run out of things to say about Salieri, and move on to complimenting someone else, and the decision would be out of Salieri’s hands. So, he did nothing. He dedicated a drawer of his desk to the letters, and waited.

*

The next time he ran into Mozart was at an evening salon of Rosenberg’s. Salieri was avoiding talking to people by standing at the edge of the room intimidating the wine glasses. Mozart’s laugh sounded over the hubbub of people, crowing out a joke, and Salieri resisted the urge to follow the sound with his eyes.

Perhaps the most irritating thing about Wolfgang Mozart, on a very long list of irritating things, was his unceasing ability to make Salieri want to laugh. It would happen without fail - the tail end of a glimpse of one of Mozart’s antics, the echo of his self-satisfied voice, and Salieri was left struggling to maintain his composure, to intercept the incredulous smiles that Mozart startled out of him before they made it to his lips.

Nobody was watching Salieri right now. He could, theoretically, have laughed at Mozart’s joke. Instead, he drained the remainder of his wine, and scowled into the bottom of the goblet.

A pretty, golden-haired woman in a glimmering dress swung past Salieri on the arm of the singer Cavalieri - Mozart’s wife. Salieri scowled harder. It was difficult not to feel out of place, when everything in Mozart’s life seemed to be touched with the same golden radiance. 

‘Maestro!’

And here was the man himself, looking better rested than he had the last time Salieri had seen him, seemingly brimming with energy. Salieri made an ungainly grab for another cup of wine.

‘Mozart.’

‘Have you seen Constance?’

Salieri considered, with a brief, savage flash of irrational spite, not answering. Then he kicked himself. ‘She went that way.’

‘Thanks. Thank you!’ Mozart smiled at Salieri, but made no move to follow his wife. Instead, he leaned forwards, bouncing slightly on the balls of his feet, and dropped his voice.

‘Rosenberg wants to talk to you,’ he told Salieri conspiratorially.

‘About what?’

Mozart shrugged. ‘About me, I should think.’

Salieri choked on his wine. There it was again, that infernal incredulous laughter. He raised his eyebrows, trying to hide his discomposure.

‘I’m glad to see you remain as modest as ever.’

‘I’m guilty of many offenses, maestro, but never let modesty be numbered among them.’

Mozart was standing very close, Salieri noted. And he still wasn’t leaving.

‘In honesty, I asked Rosenberg what he wanted to talk to you about, and he told me, as ominously as he could manage, that _I would see soon enough_. I thought I’d let you know that he was looking for you, in case you wanted to climb out of a window.’

‘Not all of us are the type to climb through windows, Mozart.’ In fact, Salieri had considered climbing through windows to escape conversations more times than he could remember, but the spectre of what would happen should he get stuck in one mid-escape had always kept him from following through.

Mozart tilted his head. ‘You don’t strike me as the climbing-out windows type,’ he conceded. ‘I could see you climbing _in_ , though.’ 

‘Breaking and entering?’ Salieri did smile at that. He couldn’t help it.

‘But I forget - Maestro Salieri would never be caught in such an undignified pursuit.’ Mozart grinned at him, rocking forwards again, so close that his breath brushed against Salieri's cheek. Then bounced back. ‘I should go. Constance has probably left already. Enjoy the rest of your evening!’

‘Goodnight,’ Salieri said, unprepared, as Mozart turned away. His mouth was suddenly dry. ‘Remember to lock your windows.’

There was a burst of giggles, and then Mozart was gone, leaving Salieri replaying the phrase _remember to lock your windows_ to himself in utter disbelief.

*

 _Your smile is a treasure_ , the next note read. And, _thousands of kisses - 2999 and a half, to be precise_. And, right at the end, _I could love you, if you would let me try_. 

*

Da Ponte looked over the selection of letters he was holding, raising his eyebrows.

‘They’re from Wolfgang Mozart,’ he said.

Salieri wasn’t entirely proud of the spluttering noise that came out of his mouth. ‘They’re - what?’

‘They’re from Mozart,’ Da Ponte repeated patiently.

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ snapped Salieri, snatching the letters out of Lorenzo’s hands with a frantic motion, and feeling the papers crumple in his fist. He had shown the collection of mysterious notes to his friend in a moment of - vanity? weakness? Now, as Lorenzo’s eyebrows continued their upward motion for an improbably long time, he was instantly beginning to regret it. Maybe if he concentrated hard enough he could will away the maddening rush of heat that was flooding his face. ‘You can’t say things like that about people. You don’t even know if he’s - like us!’

‘Yes, I do,’ said Da Ponte calmly.

‘And even if he was, it’s ridiculous to think that he’d want to, let alone have the patience to pull something like this - wait a minute, what do you mean, _yes you do?_ ’

A corner of Da Ponte’s mouth twitched. He was clearly enjoying the sight of Salieri’s consternation. ‘I mean,’ he said, ‘that I can assure you that Mozart shares our persuasion.’

‘You -’ said Salieri. His feet drew to an inadvertent halt in front of Da Ponte, who was now smiling openly. ‘You and Mozart?’

Da Ponte inclined his head.

‘When?’ Salieri demanded. 

‘Only once,’ Da Ponte said, ‘a few days after I met him. We were negotiating how we were to begin working on _Figaro_ , our work went on late, and he invited me to stay the night. Of course, you wouldn’t expect me to pass over such an opportunity for innuendo - ’

‘Lorenzo,’ groaned Salieri.

‘And Mozart took it admirably.’

‘Lorenzo!’

‘Meaning, of course, that he took my _jest_ well,’ Da Ponte said with a grin. He reached over and dropped a hand onto Salieri’s shoulder. ‘Don’t fret, Antonio.’

This was so vastly distant from the usual calibre of advice Da Ponte gave that Salieri couldn’t even begin to articulate the ways in which it fell short.

‘I am not fretting.’

Da Ponte raised his eyebrows, encompassing in one swift glance the wad of paper clenched in Salieri’s white-knuckled hand, the disarrayed strands of hair pulling loose from their tie, and the path he’d been pacing through the clutter of his chambers. 

‘I’m not,’ Salieri insisted. ‘Do you imagine I don’t know what fretting feels like?’

After weeks on end of sleepless, painful struggling to compose anything that didn’t sound hollow to his own ears, Salieri was inches from abandoning his previous career and declaring fretting his main profession. The cacophony that was currently sawing at his mind was something far bigger and more precarious.

Mozart. Salieri’s feelings for his fellow composer were something he kept under tight control. It wasn’t merely the desire that bothered him - in spite of society, desire for other men had never been anything other than ordinary to Antonio. Humans were fallible, after all, and it was no surprise to Antonio that he was more fallible than most. His time at court had been marked out by a series of carefully calculated liasons, most anonymous, some - like the month or so of his relationship with Lorenzo, or his few nights with the enthusiastic, genuine Gottlieb Stephanie - fading naturally back to a friendship only a few shades deeper than professional. No, it was the nature of his feelings for Mozart in particular that had stabbed into him from the first instant they’d exchanged words. Mozart’s cockiness, Mozart’s utter lack of reserve. He’d been startling. And then his music! That this ridiculous man could create, out of the same paper and ink, the same keys and strings as anyone else, something so utterly, shockingly profound - 

All this - this blend of jealousy and arousal and wonder and frustration and a deep, burning need to know how he did it, to reach into the depths of Mozart and to understand him in all his contradictions - was wound up taut as a violin string at the back of Salieri’s mind, where it hummed and jangled at the slightest Mozart-related touch, while he did his best to ignore it. And now, thanks to Da Ponte, there was a new note resonating off of this mess. Images of Mozart’s hands on a piano, the intensity of his glance as he conducted, combined with the new reality that Da Ponte had suggested. Mozart’s hands on a lover’s skin - Mozart’s bright laughter a sound of pleasure - Mozart’s eyes watching him, watching Salieri - 

‘He is married, is he not?’ Salieri managed, as pointedly as he could. Da Ponte shrugged.

‘He and his wife have an arrangement. It seems that she spends a considerable amount of time visiting with his elder sister.’

‘His wife too?’ The desire for those of the same gender was apparently more common in Vienna than Salieri could have predicted.

‘I didn’t think it polite to press for details. But yes, I would assume so.’

Salieri dropped, mostly accurately, onto his desk chair, resting his face in his hands. What if the notes were from Mozart? What would he do then? His rebellious mind was trying its utmost to shy away from the thought. If Mozart had written those things - sketching out the performance directions for Salieri’s thoughts in the same ink he used to write symphonies and arias -

‘You need to relax,’ Da Ponte was saying. ‘Honestly, I thought you’d be a lot happier about this.’

Salieri didn’t have even the slightest idea of how to begin engaging with that assumption, so he opted to ignored it.

‘Why would it be Mozart?’ he asked instead.

‘I think you had better ask Mozart that,’ Da Ponte said.

Salieri let out a hollow laugh. If, by some wild possibility, Wolfgang Mozart truly was spending his time writing anonymous, affectionate notes to someone like Salieri, then confronting him about it was the last thing that Salieri wanted to do about that fact. The first thing was to change his name and move to a different, Mozart-free country. Maybe with a border between them, he’d finally be able to sleep again.

‘The notes are delivered to your chambers, yes?’ Da Ponte was now flicking through the stack of letters. ‘Simply make sure you’re there to receive them next time.’

Then again, it would be a relief to find out who was responsible for the notes, if only for the sake of proving Lorenzo wrong.

‘Fine,’ Salieri said. He scooped the letters back into an untidy pile, quickly, more quickly than he usually did, watching without really concentrating as the edges overlapped. ‘I’ll talk to whoever’s delivering them.’

Da Ponte smiled. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Well, I feel like I’ve done more than enough for this particular conversation, so I’m going to head out. I’ll check on you in a few days.’

*

This meant, of course, that the entirety of Salieri’s next morning was spent brooding on his own threshhold, staring at the crack beneath the door and worrying the edges of his bundle of letters to shreds. It was over before he’d had the chance to get incapacitatingly worked up, which he supposed was a good thing - it was barely eight thirty when the creak of footsteps on the stairs outside jerked him out of his own pacing. His correspondent was an early riser.

The door slipped out of Salieri’s hands and hit the wall with a loud bang. He jumped. So did the man at the top of the stairs.

Hazel eyes flashed up to meet Salieri’s, startled. Salieri felt that glance, somehow, physically, lodge itself somewhere in his ribcage. Mozart was wearing some sort of sequinned explosion. The tail end of his surprised exclamation was trailing off of his lips. There was also (Salieri’s heart clenched, fiercely) a folded piece of paper in his hand.

Which meant that Lorenzo had been right, Salieri realised dimly, through the haze of his own emotions. Damn the man - he always seemed to be right about things.

Mozart, for once, wasn’t speaking, just watching Salieri and waiting. There was a nervous sort of smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

Salieri tried to speak, then gave a rough sort of shrug, and tried again.

‘Come in?’ he asked, hoarsely.

Mozart stepped over the threshold with a quiet ‘Thanks.’ He paused, carefully, next to where Salieri’s couch, half-buried in clothes and books, rose like an island out of the detritus covering the floorboards, and Salieri was suddenly, acutely aware of the chaos of his chambers.

‘Sorry,’ he said, vaguely, gesturing at the mess.

'Not to worry!’ Mozart, who’d been studying the spines of Salieri’s abandoned books with apparent interest, looked quickly back around. ‘It’s no worse than I expected.’

The look that Salieri gave him at that must have been something close to a glower. ‘Really.’

‘Well, perhaps it’s a little worse than I expected,’ Mozart admitted cheerfully.

Salieri coughed. Now it had come to it, and he had absolutely no idea how to approach the topic. If only his window wasn't on the third floor. He contemplated offering Mozart a drink, chatting about court politics and the weather, and spending the entire rest of his life avoiding ever mentioning the existence of the letters. That would probably be worse, he decided, as he caught another glimpse of Mozart's expectant expression, and his heart took another broadside.

He tossed the letters onto the couch. ‘You wrote these?’

'I did!’ said Mozart eagerly. He traced his finger over the purple velvet ribbon tying the bundle of letters together, a smile starting to grow on his face. ‘I’m flattered you’ve given them such a lovely ribbon.’ 

Salieri scowled, resisting the urge to snatch the letters back again. He hadn’t dared to wear the ribbon in his hair, in case the sender of the notes had seen him wearing it. ‘I wouldn’t have had to tie them together at all, if you hadn’t sent so _many_.’

Mozart gave a giggle at that. ‘Too many notes, maestro?’

There it was again, that relentless urge to laugh, dragging at the back of Salieri’s throat. He swallowed it down.

‘Why?’

‘Why what?’

Salieri gritted his teeth. Of course this conversation wasn’t going to be easy. ‘Why did you send them to me?’

The smile had dropped from Mozart’s face at that, replaced with a look of honest confusion.

‘I thought that would have been obvious,’ he said. ‘Did you not… read them?’

‘Of course I read them,’ said Salieri. _Multiple times, some of them, and in multiple improper scenarios_. A blush was threatening his cheeks and neck again. Thankfully, Mozart didn’t comment on it, just flung his arms wide open in a dramatic gesture.

‘Well, then,’ he said. ‘There you have it.’

It would be so easy for Salieri to put his arms around Mozart like this - to drop his head onto Mozart’s shoulder, to fling himself into the waiting circle of Mozart’s embrace like some swooning maiden. He held himself back.

‘Did you mean them?’ he asked. Carefully.

‘Did - of course I meant them!’ Mozart’s voice retained its cheerful bravado, but his outstretched arms slipped a fraction. ‘Unless they were offensive to you, in which case I hope you’ll give me the chance to pretend that they were a joke.’

‘They weren’t offensive.’ Salieri’s voice was barely working. The words slipped from him in a low rumble.

‘Good,’ said Mozart, fervently. He stepped forwards, closer, and then his hand was encircling Salieri’s wrist, warm and vividly present. Salieri could feel his pulse flickering under Mozart’s palm like a moth against a lamp. ‘Because I meant every word.’

Salieri kissed him.

Mozart let out a tiny gasp, and then he was kissing Salieri back. His lips were warm against Salieri’s, and his hand shot to Salieri’s wrist again, pulling his arms back to encircle his waist, holding them closer. A wicked smile of pure delight was dancing over his face when they leaned apart.

This made sense, Salieri realised, with a thrill. This was what he’d wanted from Mozart, what he always wanted from Mozart - the drive to understand, to be close. His hands were closed in the fabric of Mozart’s jacket. He could feel Mozart’s breathing against his neck. 

‘Antonio?’

‘Hmm?’ Salieri, distracted, only realised a second later that Mozart had called him by his first name. The realisation went zinging through him, bright as a chord. ‘Yes,’ he said.

‘I’ve given this away already,’ Mozart confessed, ‘but I really am very fond of you.’

‘I’ve wanted - this -’ Salieri said, ‘for a very long time. Embarrassingly long.’

Mozart kissed him again. ‘I’m glad to hear it!’ He kissed him again, and again.

‘Aren’t you going to get tired of that?’ Salieri asked, eventually, breathlessly. His cheeks hurt.

‘Never,’ Mozart declared. ‘Besides, I have a great deal of letters’-worth of kisses to catch up on. Two thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine, at the very least.'

'And a half,' Salieri corrected. The lightness in his chest was dizzying. 'The half is important.'

'And a half,' agreed Mozart. 'I suppose I'd best get started, then.'

*

‘Besides,' said Mozart, apropos absolutely nothing, 'you started it.’

The sound of Mozart's voice dropped through the soft late-afternoon quietness of the bedroom like a penny in a fountain.

‘Hmm?’ Salieri, drowsily, raised his head from Mozart’s chest with some reluctance. ‘Started what?’

‘Leaving notes! I never thought that you’d let me get close - and then you left that note on my manuscript. That was what gave me the idea in the first place.’

‘How did you know that was me?’

‘I saw you leaving the room.’

‘Ah.’ So much for subtlety. Salieri dropped his head back onto Mozart’s chest, feeling the warmth of his skin, the easy rush of his breath.

‘You’re smiling,’ Mozart teased.

Salieri considered denying it, but dismissed the thought as too much effort. ‘So are you,’ he pointed out, instead, and Mozart’s smile widened, adding to the sunlight that was drifting through the windows, catching on Mozart’s discarded jacket, Salieri’s belt buckle on the floor, illuminating the bed like it was made of stained glass.

‘Thank you,’ Mozart said sincerely, pushing himself onto one elbow. Salieri, dislodged, brushed his hair out of his face.

‘For what?’

‘For trusting me,’ Mozart said. ‘With this. With us.’

Maybe it would be alright, Salieri thought. Maybe the universe would grant them this - the time to explore each other, to learn where they’d come from, to understand each other. The time to love each other, maybe.

He reached over, and took Mozart’s hand.


End file.
